My 1984 CJ-7

I really enjoy my Camaro. It's a great car and is fun to drive. But it has a few drawbacks that doesn't make it the ideal vehicle for every situation. Firstly, it's quite enclosed so on nice days it is hard to enjoy the sun while driving. Secondly, it's a rear wheel drive vehicle that doesn't do so well in the snow. I found this out the hard way in December when we received a couple of inches and my Camaro got stuck in the lot at work for a few hours.

So I decided to purchase a second vehicle that would be fun to drive in the summer and could go places the Camaro couldn't. After looking around for awhile I bought a 1984 CJ-7 from a guy on Craigslist. He had just finished completely redoing the body and had done some work on the interior.

This is the only picture I have of her, since she has mostly been in the garage.

Part of the reason I chose to buy such an old jeep and not like a 90's Wrangler is that I wanted something I could work on. I was looking for a vehicle that I could also spend some time fixing up. Since body work is not my forte I was glad that this jeep was freshly painted.  Buying a 30 year old vehicle that has 113k miles on her means there will pretty much always be stuff to do.

I realized exactly how soon I would have to start working when I started driving it home from Olympia and she died on the way and couldn't get started again. Job-1: Purchase and install a new battery. From there she did fine on the highway home until I got to a red light where the engin would stall every time the vehicle came to a stop. I eventually got her home after a very long trip, but Job-2 was to disassemble and clean the venturi assembly in the carburetor and reset the mixture screws to the manufacturers specs.

Last week I attacked some of the electrical problems. The tach, fuel gauge and radio were all dead and a ground somewhere was constantly draining the battery. Job-3 was the fuel gauge where the fix was as simple as finding and connecting the right wires. Job-4 was the tach which was hard wired to the battery for some reason. Job-5 was the most important, finding a live wire to connect power to the radio which for some reason had been cut.

This week Job-6 was replacing a dried and leaking gasket on the 258 straight 6 valve cover which took the better part of two nights. It would have been an easier job if there wasn't a stupid bolt in the 3/4 of an inch between the valve cover and the firewall.

Right before putting the valve cover gasket on

I also had the enjoyment of registering the vehicle and paying the absurd WA state use tax, which requires people to pay sales tax on things they buy from other private citizens. So if I bought an Xbox on craigslist or scalped some concert tickets, I as supposed to pay the state 9.8% of the purchase price. Obviously no one does that but when it comes to vehicles the State actually has an effective way to collect the tax by not issuing a registration until you pay. I guess that's what we get for not having an income tax.

This weekend I took down Job-7 and Job-8; the first was flushing the radiator. I had to disconnect most of the hoses to get to the valve cover off, so why not put some new coolant in. Job-8 was a simple oil change and a new filter.

Since the guy I bought it from had only had it to do the body work, I really don't know the last time it's had any maintenance done so I'm pretty much assuming that everything needs to be checked or changed. It's been a good amount of work the past two weeks, but I've really enjoyed having something to do each night and it's gotten me off the couch. I think I've taken care most of the major stuff I'm aware of right now. My goal is to have it in good shape by the summer so I can take the top and doors off and go up into the mountains with her.

I think the next few jobs will be changing the air filter, tracing down a bad connection somewhere in the speaker wires and checking the brakes which seem a little iffy.

I'm looking excited to having another vehicle and especially one that I can work on. The other nice thing is that when I drive the Jeep onto the ferry I get a discount because she is so short.

Passive-Aggressive Notes

I'm not newcomer to the world of passive-aggressive notes. I've seen my fair share. For example, take this little gem from our Sophomore year house.

Now, I was only tangentially involved, but it does highlight the brilliance of a quality response to the passive-aggressive note. Yes, I've been to the website.

Anyways, I found myself holding a passive aggressive note from my neighbor just this week. Admittedly, it wasn't overly passive-aggressive, and she probably has a good point. But I still needed to respond to let her know three things, and didn't really feel like being a total dick, like I've done in the past..

1) I'm aware of her complaint. 

2) I do not intend to do anything about her complaint. 

3) If she waits a bit the problem may just solve itself.

So here is her note, and my riposte.

Not my greatest work, but still good enough to blog about.

NFL City Trips

I was sitting on a flight home from a Thanksgiving trip to San Diego and I started thinking about how many major cities I've been to in the past year. It's been quite a few, but I also started thinking about all the cities I haven't been to in a number of years. So I decided to see how long it's been since I've visited each city with an NFL team. I consider visiting the city as at least spending enough time in the city to enjoy a meal. An airport layover or driving by on the interstate doesn't count. I drive by Baltimore almost annually, but rarely actually visit Baltimore.

The results are presented here for your viewing pleasure:

It's pretty good that I've been to 11 of the 32 NFL cities within the past year, but it is disheartening that past that I haven't really been to many other NFL cities in the past few years. I'm a little embarrassed about San Francisco and Boston. I feel like I've been to each of these cities within the past 5 years, but I cannot recall when. They are high on my list of places to go again soon.

As a side note, it would also be an interesting list to do NBA teams, as I have been to Oklahoma City, Portland and LA recently, but have never visited Memphis, Toronto or San Antonio. 

Dallas - Vegas

Last weekend I headed to Dallas, Texas to watch my beloved Michigan Wolverines face off against the Crimson Tide of Alabama.The game wasn't that great, but the trip was still a good time. We bought tickets when they first went on sale in February, and managed to get 14 seats together.

I left work on the Friday before labor day around noon, and drove to the airport. I had a direct flight to Dallas and there were a few other guys on the flight wearing Michigan gear but surprisingly no Alabama fans. I guess that the aerospace and software companies don't recruit much out of Tuscaloosa. I got into DFW around 7:30 and took a 30 minute cab ride into Dallas. We had secured lodging arrangements through Mark's wife's who had friends in Dallas who were going to be out of town that weekend. The amount of trust it must of taken for them to let 9 people stay in their 1 bedroom apartment for the weekend is unfathomable. I was the last to arrive and started sucking down a brewski and watching the MSU-Boise State game. We then left to eat some dinner at Qdoba where we all got Burritos and Beer. We then headed to a bar next door that looked very shady from the outside, but was supposed to make wicked strong cocktails.

After a few admittedly strong cocktails, we made our way down to the heart of Uptown Dallas. I had expected Dallas to be really spread out and suburban, but I was kinda surprised with how walk-able this neighborhood was. We headed to this bar called the Black Friar which had three floors and seemed like a congregation of Michigan fans who graduated around the same time as I did. I ended up meeting up with some old friends and kids who I grew up with. Twice I went up to the very crowded (and hot) bar and ordered 4 Bud Lights just for myself. We ended the night doing warm shots of nasty tequila. We then headed back home where I shared an air mattress with another dude. But we slept with out heads on different sides, so it was okay.

The next morning was gameday and that meant waking up at 7am. Sure, it was a night game, but the rule is 7am on gameday, so that's what we did. We picked up some Kolaches (sausages in a roll) and fought through some rough hangovers. We then loaded into some cars and went over to Albertsons (or as Alex called it "Albatross's") to pick up beer and supplies for our tailgate. We got to our tailgate lot around noon, but it was about 1pm before I felt well enough to start drinking. After a tough first beer, I got a little more loose and conversational.

One of the people we were most excited about being there was Mordor Troy. Troy went to Colorado, but is a Michigan fan and came up to Ann Arbor for the Notre Dame game last year. He had taught us this game called Mordor (this his nickname), which is like speed quarters with solo cups and ping-pong balls and is pure insanity. We played a few rounds of that, and then taught it to the Bama fans tailgaiting next to us. Later we would win $40 from them betting of games of Flip-Cup.

I came away very impressed with Cowboy Stadium. It was pure class through and through. It was a shame that the game results forced me to buy a few more $9 beers than  I wanted. But enough about that.

On Sunday we got up and went out to breakfast as a big group. After that I took off for the airport to start the second half of my weekend.

Since it was labor day weekend, and I didn't have anything to do in Dallas for another day, I figured why not go over to Vegas before heading home. So I jetted over there for the night. I decided to skip getting a hotel room and I would just stay up drinking and gambling all night and catch my flight the next morning. This would have been a better plan if I hadn't spent the last two nights getting hammered and barely sleeping on an air mattress. But with free red-bull and coffee at the casinos I wasn't too worried.

I started out at Caesars where I dropped my bag off at the bell desk. I then went right to the sportbook to watch some of the Sunday games and to see what bets were on the board. I ended up betting on the Baylor-SMU game and the Tigers game. I then went across the street to the Flamingo and then made my way south stopping at Wild Bills, Paris and finally Planet Hollywood where I found my ideal blackjack table that had views of both games. I gambled there and watched the games, which I won both my bets. I then headed back to Caesars to claim my tickets. I talked to the sportsbook manager to see if anyone had a line available on the Michigan-Air Force game. He looked it up and told me that only the Wynn had the line out. So I started making my way up to the Wynn. After that I decided why not head all the way north to the dystopia that is the Riveria and Circus Circus. It was a pleasant reminder as to why I never go past Encore.

The entire time my goal was to get down to The Tropacana to see the renovations. I was now at the far north end of the strip and was looking at an hour walk down to The Trop. So I hopped in a cab and $14 later was there. I ended up spending the next 4 hours playing blackjack at the Trop. I was surprised to find $5 blackjack on the strip that paid 3:2. I was also at a really fun table where we were all entertained by this Russian guy in his twenty who was obviously high on coke. He was betting black chips, losing, and pulling out more Benjamins from his huge wad of bills. He kept disappearing and coming back. He also would turn around and tell the girl in the dress behind us to bet on number 2 in roulette so he could look up her dress as she placed her bet. He was a good time.

At about 3:30am I was back to even, so I decided to start heading back to Ceasars. I took a beer for the road and walked up the strip. I got back to caesars and killed some time drinking and playing video poker. After that I got my bag back from the bell desk and hopped in a cab to the airport. I was drunk and exhausted. The plane could have crashed and I wouldn't have woken up. I slept just long enough to be able to drive myself home, crawl into bed and sleep for the next 9 hours. It was a good trip.

Franksgiving

When we inherited the BOX house we also chose to continue many of our favorite traditions. Things like tailgates, Christmas parties and Whimmy Sesh's continued along with one of my favorite traditions - Thanksgiving. It was one last chance for college friendship before we all went home to real Thanksgiving and came back to start studying for finals.

Thanksgiving was the one time of year that the Box house actually put on its Sunday's best and hosted something relatively nice. At least it would start out nice until everyone realized it was an excuse to get drunk on bagged wine.

Amazingly the Facebook invite still exists from the 2009 Thanksgiving. I present it to you.

Justin said he would bring Thanksgiving Tacos.

That year we had 2 Turkeys, a ham and a duck. We turned on the fireplace DVD and acted as civil as we possible could. It was one of the nights that you really appreciated the true friendships that you had in school.

Below are some of my favorite pictures from that evening.

One of the Final weeks we lived with Matt

Chris pressing the flesh

People were very full after dinner

Me with Zola and the fancy wine

Stumble

It was a bright summer day in 2008 and instead of enjoying it my roommates and I were all sitting around the house watching trash TV. It was one of those days where it was too hot to really pay attention to the episode of Intervention or Tyra. Most of us were on our laptops fucking around on the internet. A constant stream of giggles were coming for the couch where Peter sat. Every few minutes he would turn the monitor around and show us something ridiculously funny. Soon after we were all huddled around his computer watching him press the "random button" on the internet.

That button was StumbleUpon. An internet engine that with a click of a button would take you to a site that you would probably like based on your preferences. It's how I first discovered XKCD. I spent probably an hour a day for the next 2 years stumbling. Staying awake for "one last stumble before bed". Eventually I had to quit, it was just too much. I destroyed my laptop bought a new computer and refused to download StumbleUpon. Sure enough Stumble wondered where one of it's most faithful servants had gone and sent me a message.



I had no choice but to respond and break it off.

I was just going through some old emails and came across my response and got a good chuckle. I never heard back from Stumble but re-reading it made me think fondly about all the things I could have accomplished if it wasn't for StumbleUpon.

Brazil Part 3: Rio

Some cities are really beautiful to fly into. Seattle's landing pattern gives passengers a great view of the downtown and a vista of the water and mountains. It didn't even register when compared with flying into Rio. The city is built where the mountains meet the sea and the buildings spring up in the strips of level land.

We landed and got a cab with Ping who it turns out was staying at a hostel near ours. We got her number and talked about hanging out later but Rob already had a pretty full itinerary for our stay. Rob had been up in Rio a few months ago and had made some female friends. He also knew some people from Couchsurfing and whatnot.

ABBA Art is the true mark of a Swedish hostel

Our hostel was located in Ipanema and was 3 blocks from the beach. It was a pretty cool little hostel on a small colorful alley that was filled with hostels. At the end of the alley there was a newspaper stand where for $2 you could buy cans of beer that the merchant kept hidden in a cooler. We checked in at the hostel and dropped our stuff off. Rob was making sure the toilets still flushed the other direction in Rio and I hung out in the lounge and met one of the guys also staying in the Hostel. He was one of my favorite characters that I met in Brazil. His name was Charles and he was from Sweden. He had graduated high school and embarked on a career as a hot dog salesmen in an airport in Denmark. Apparently the Danes like hot dogs so much that Charles was able to save enough money to get to Brazil. He had decided to move here but didn't really ever get around to planning on where he was going to live, or what he was going to do for money. His biggest focus was getting his workout on and it showed. The first time I saw him I almost asked if he was a US Marine.

The beach at Ipanema

Rob and I decided to check out Ipanema and invited Charles to walk around with us. Charles kept talking about how he had to get on a bus to go to this boxing gym. Since he didn't bother to learn any Portuguese before he came to Brazil Rob had to ask a local how to get there for him. It turns out the Boxing gym was located right near the Favela. You know, the Brazilian slums where lawlessness reigns. We put him in this vanpool thing and figured it would be the last we would ever see of Charles.

We grabbed some delicious food of grilled onions, chicken and melted cheese over potatoes. During the meal Rob was busy on the cell phone setting up plans. We went back to the hostel changed and then left for Copacabana. There was a big Couchsurfing get-together on the beach which would prove to be great mingling. I met ex-pats from a bunch of different countries as well as Brazilians. I ended up getting pretty sloshed on Caipirinhas (Brazil's national drink, rum, sugar and lime).

I stepped away from the party for a minute to find a bathroom and was walking down the boulevard when a guy came up to me and asked if I was looking for Charley and Steve. I had no idea what he was talking about so I asked him what he meant a couple of times. Eventually he just said "You know, Charley and Steve, Cocaine and Weed" I did not know, but then I did. I politely declined.

After the party we got some Bob's, which is a burger place almost exactly like Burger King, but a Whopper is called a Big Bob, which I enjoyed ordering. It was about 11 and we weren't done partying yet. So we got in a cab and headed to Lapa. Rob tried to describe Lapa and I didn't quite know what to Imagine. We spent some time there that night walking around, but I wouldn't really get a feel for what Lapa was truly like until we would go there the next night.

Hanging out in the alley outside the hostel

We woke up the next morning late. The two Norwedgian girl who were sharing the bunk beds in our room had gotten up hours before probably to do dumb touristy things. We got up and went straight to the beach. To our surprise, Charles had survived the Favela and was back at the hostel. He came with us to the beach. After a "good value lunch" as Charles called it I got some work in on my underarm tan. For those who don't know, getting a solid underarm tan is one of the hardest tans to get, and it takes hard work to get one. I wasn't going to go all the way to Brazil and not come home with a decent looking underarm.

After the beach we went back to the hostel for our patented 20-minute hour long power nap. We got dressed and were heading out to dinner when we ran into Charles and Dutch Paul who were also going out to dinner. Dutch Paul had spent some time traveling to Africa, but similar to Charles didn't really have much going on in the way of life plans. After dinner they took off for the Favela again, and we went to find some more normal people to hang out with.

Getting into Lapa

We went back to the hostel and found some of the other people from the hostel hanging out in the alley drinking and chilling. There was Marcus and Fanny from Norway, Alara from NYC and Mike who was coincidentally from Seattle. We hung out with them drinking and talking about traveling the world. Mike had been to Thailand before, and Marcus and Fanny were just starting a trip around South America. Rob had a friend who came and met up with us and brought a few of her friends along too. We all decided to go out to Lapa together and at the last minute convinced the Norwegian girls to come. We were rolling a solid 9-person crew.

We pulled up to Lapa and got out of the cabs. The first thing we came across was some sort of street demonstration that is now ingrained in my mind forever. It was some sort of sexual freedom thing where about 7 people wore all white and drank cow blood and walked around like zombies and sat on each others faces and masturbated in the street and had sex with each other and dropped trow and pissed on the street. It was pretty weird.

The weird ritualistic sex show has begun

Step 1: pour cow blood on each other

Step 2: big gay pile

Step 3: feverishly masturbate under viaduct

Step 4: piss in street

After about 10 minutes of watching the sex show with a bemused expression on my face and drinking a caipirinha while everyone else used the bathroom we moved on. Lapa was a lot like the French Quarter of New Orleans. People were everywhere in the streets and the bars open right into the streets. We went to this place with 4 stories, and the top floor was a nightclub. Everyone had a great time dancing and partying. I got a little bit of liquid courage and jumped in the middle of a Brazilian dance circle. I've never danced so inspired and they loved me for it. We stayed there until about 2am and then most of us came back to Ipanema. I ate a street hot dog and then we drank beers on the street. Marcus and I headed back to the hostel around 4am while everyone else stayed at the bar. It took us awhile to find the hostel because neither of us really knew where we were.

Last night with the Norwegian girls

On Saturday I woke up super hungry. I had only one thing I really wanted to do while in Brazil and that was to eat at an authentic Brazilian Steakhouse. Yeppers, a real live all-you-can-meat buffet. Rob and I made an event of it. I think we were there about 3 hours, just living like kings. They had some of the best chicken hearts I ever tasted.

All that meat and I only took a picture of the cheese

After our meal we headed to Sugarloaf mountain which has some of the best views of Rio. On the way up we ended up seeing the Norwegian girls, but we were actively avoiding them at this point. Sugarloaf was absolutely gorgeous. I didn't go to Christ the Redeemer because I wanted to save something for my next trip to Rio.

Rio at dusk

We went back to the hostel for our usual 20-minute hour long power nap. I woke up and went down the alley for some beers to drink in the shower. We polished off a few more beers before heading out to meet with some more girls Rob knew. We went to this area of the city where the locals live and not filled with tourist like Ipanema. We met up with these girls one of whom was the sister of the DJ. They got us VIP wristbands which was pretty awesome. It didn't even matter that the girls were only 19. We made them all do Tequila shots since it was Cinco de Mayo even though the Brazilians were very confused why we were doing shots to celebrate Mexico's independence. It was awesome going to a real Brazilian club and verifying that the hottest ones don't just hang out where the gringo's are.

19 year olds.

The next day it was back to the beach. I did some more work on the underarms and did a lot of work with my eyes (if you know what i mean). After the beach it was back to the hostel for beers with the rest of the guests. There were a few English chaps who were terribly boring and these two guys from Honduras. After enough beers we went out to this bar that Seattle Mike knew about. We were hanging out there when this very drunk Brazilian girl came over and propositioned all three of us for sex. It wouldn't have been so bad if she wasn't super disgusting. We drank a lot of liqour drinks to forget her and then the night opened up. The bar was full of people from everywhere. A few blokes from Australia, a girl from Ireland, more English guys, the Norwegian girls (we were not avoiding them anymore). We went outside the bar for some hot dogs and cheap street beers and hung out with more Europeans including Charles, who amazingly was not dead. It was a pretty awesome night in Rio, and a great last night.

Seattle Mike with Russell Brand & the other Aussie

Finally my trip had to come to an end. The next morning we headed to the Airport to begin heading home. When we got to the airport we had the pleasant surprise of being told that the airline had canceled our reservations and we had no tickets home. Luckily for us, we could rebuy our tickets from the shitty Brazilian airline for 3x the original price. It was total bullshit but since I had a connection international flight I pretty much had to pay it. Rob on the other hand had no reason to get swindled going back, so he decided to stay in Rio for a few more nights. When I got home I immediately called Visa and disputed the charge. The weirdest part of the whole thing was that the flight was nearly empty. They charged me $421 to take a flight that had 22 people on an 180 person plane. Given their pricing and customer service no wonder the plane was empty.

I eventually made it back home and slept for 18 hours before going into work. Everyone asked me about my trip, but who really wants to hear a 5,000 word story about a trip that they didn't go on. You apparently.